Posposição de sujeito em manchetes jornalísticas : uma abordagem funcional

• Autor(a) principal: Rosa, Enoch Tótola Vieira
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (riUfes)
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.ufes.br/handle/10/3695
• topic: Word order; Functionalism; Post-verbal subject; Discourse; Sujeito posposto; Discurso; Linguística; Ordem (Filosofia); Funcionalismo (Linguística); Comunicação escrita; 80

The present research aims to investigate the discursive behavior of the reversal of word order VS (verb+subject) and SV (subject+verb) in modern Portuguese. The data for this study were taken from headlines collected daily from “A TRIBUNA” and “A GAZETA” newspapers over a period of four months (from March to July, 2007). First, it is observed how the word order phenomenon is treated in the literature by grammarians, and linguistic studies which specifically focus on post-verbal subject position is then considered. In addition, because the current study supports the view that language is a phenomenon resulting from the interaction between its users, rather than an aseptic organization in which linguistic categories are discreetly installed, considerations about Functionalism in language are made. In this sense, the VS word order is investigated under the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic perspectives. Thus, the functional sentence perspective is also mentioned. According to this theory, utterances are usually articulated under topic/comment, theme/rheme. These have been rendered as a distinction between old/given information (topic/theme) and new information (comment/rheme) respectively. The theme/rheme dichotomy seems not to apply to an analysis which considers language as a discursive activity since old/given information may be found either in the sentential topic or in the comment. It is also evidenced that in newspaper headlines the VS word order not always functions as a presentation strategy, one of the main characteristics of the “post-verbal subject”. On the other hand, it is common that in newspaper headlines the “post-verbal subject” be (re)introduced in discourse as an object – a syntactic function which presents new information. Finally, the verb “to leave” (“sair”) is analyzed. Results indicate that when this verb requires a NP as subject (person) it usually occurs in sentences in which the word order is SV, whereas when a NP as subject (thing) is required, the VS word order occurs. In this situation, this verb presents an abstract trait thus having a fixed position in the sentence.